The Dangerous Psychology of Defamation, Exclusion, and Persecution

And the Antidote that Could be

Now that we have given a 79-year-old man his five-year-old’s birthday gift; have watched him deploy troops to occupy his opponents; have observed a senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed; and have witnessed him send his scapegoats to foreign concentration camps—we should no longer ignore the obvious. Donald Trump has serious and dangerous psychological problems that need to be addressed, or we will sacrifice our society for it.

His internal problems are not going to lessen by externally giving him what he wants. In fact, this is the surest way to worsen them.

And the longer we refuse to call out his psychopathology through “sanewashing” or by hiding mental health experts from the public sphere, the more his pathology will spread. These are the critical issues I and my colleagues have tried to bring to attention for many years now.

At the unprecedented Army Parade spectacle on June 14, 2025, Donald Trump made sure that he and “my Army” were the centers of attention. If this were a legitimate event, then where were the key, or even minor, members of Congress—the governmental body that funds and oversees the Army? Where were the major media? Where were recent major, four-star generals: James Mattis, Lloyd Austin, John Kelly, and David Petraeus? Where were any foreign leaders whom Trump said would attend? Even the “civilian” audience for this unprecedented event was quite limited—just look at the pictures of the small gatherings along Constitution Avenue (and compare them to the more than eleven million who demonstrated for “No Kings” throughout the country!).

It is obvious what is happening psychologically: this gala parade—costing about 50 million dollars and mobilizing 6600 soldiers, 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, 34 horses, and seven military bands—purposefully staged on Donald Trump’s birthday, was all about mollifying him. However, it will not work, as long as we are breeding disease.

Few people make the connection between the breakdown of democracy and the loss of psychological health of a society. Yet, just as a proper functioning of a person depends on a healthy body and mind, so is the case for a body politic. If the head is unwell, we cannot expect the rest of the body to go on functioning without a glitch. Fascism is not just a different style of politics but a pathology that will eventually destroy politics. When matters are entering the realm of pathology, and the nation is facing a collective mental health crisis, then mental health is an area of expertise that we cannot afford to leave out.

What is uniquely dangerous about Donald Trump, and thus compelled our involvement since the Yale conference of 2017, assembling the most renowned living psychiatrists and publishing our runaway New York Times bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, was that he held the status of president of the United States. Understanding his profoundly dangerous psychology—and the fact that he held the status of “the most powerful man in the world”—obligated us to speak out more, not less. He is the singular person who holds all our destinies in his hands, long-term because of the pathology and criminality he spreads culturally, but also short-term, potentially catastrophically, as he is the military commander-in-chief with an insatiable need to show unlimited force and, should that fail, would have “the nuclear football” within his reach.

Those were the concerns, not politics, that propelled us psychiatrists and mental health experts to recognize from the start that we had a major societal responsibility and a public health obligation—no matter the disinformation the American Psychiatric Association spread about its insignificant, self-serving, “Goldwater rule.” The situation we have today—as we warned it would become if this person were not properly understood, restrained, managed, and contained—is far more catastrophic than it was years ago. That is why our new edition is titled, The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 50 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Warn Anew.

Fascism in society does not develop because of single individuals. Fascists and tyrants have always been a part of human society, but they are usually subdued or walled off in jails and prisons in a healthy democracy. Enlightened societies may even remove the dysfunctional structures that give rise to them in the first place. We know that even cancer cells are necessary but insufficient causes of cancer, since they occur in the body all the time. It is only when the immune cells, or the body’s resistance, fail to detect and remove them, or wall them off, that they come to spread and determine the fate of the entire body.

When disease is not contained but spreads, then the body’s chance of survival depends on its resistance. A healthy body rejects malignant cells, but an unhealthy one succumbs, facilitates, and may even actively promote their spread, no matter the threat posed, gaining endless momentum toward the ultimate goal of any disease: destruction and death. In the same sense, a healthy body rejects fascism, but an unhealthy one acquiesces, embraces, and may even enthusiastically assist its spread, no matter the clear threat. And as long as the pathological or criminal is not held accountable for what it is, it will be the most motivated to “reverse” terminologies to label the healthy pathological (“Trump derangement syndrome”) and the innocent criminal (Abrego García as an “MS-13 gang member”; Senator Alex Padilla as “lunging into the room”; and peaceful Los Angeles protesters as “violent insurrectionist mobs”).

According to Scottish Enlightenment thinker David Hume’s On the First Principles of Government, power is on the side of the governed. Part of this power—and true power is always healthy—the people have at their disposal mental health expertise, which can keep them grounded in the truth amid much distortion. With the exclusion of mental health experts from public discourse, they have been disempowered and taught to say, “We know he is mentally unwell,” and therefore, “We know all there is to know.” Yet, would we say, when we have a broken, protruding bone: “We know the bone is broken, and so we do not need a surgeon”? We would call an orthopedist immediately! Mental health is perhaps even more complex, especially in cases of severity, since compromises to the mind affect our very ability to recognize that something is wrong. Robert Jay Lifton’s concept of a “malignant normality” issuing from a disordered personality, or “Trump Contagion,” as I have also dubbed it, is best contained through prevention. The eleven million out in the streets on June 14, 2025, may be such a beginning.

Announcement:

Dr. Bandy X. Lee is holding weekly live sessions on:

“Special Topics in One World or None”

The next session will be this Friday, June 20, 2025, at 12 noon EDT/9 a.m. PDT on Zoom. A paid subscription is required to receive a link the morning before. Thank you!

Dr. Lee is a forensic and social psychiatrist who became known to the public through her 2017 Yale conference and book that emphasized the importance of fit leadership. In 2019, she organized a major National Press Club Conference on the theme of, “The Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” In 2024, she followed up with another major Conference, “The More Dangerous State of the World and the Need for Fit Leadership.” She published another book on fit leadership that has been recently expanded, in addition to a volume on how unfitness in a leader spreads and two critical statements on fit leadership. Dr. Lee warned that journalists and intellectuals are the first to be suppressed in times of unfit leadership, and it is happening here; she continues, however, to be interviewed or covered abroad, such as in France, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and Canada (with notable articles in Estonian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Korean). She authored the internationally-acclaimed textbook, Violence; over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters; and 17 scholarly books and journal special issues, in addition to over 300 opinion editorials. Dr. Lee is also a master of divinity, currently developing a new curriculum for public education on “One World or None.”